


Purple Haze

by Germinal



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Crack Pairing, Drugs, M/M, Oral Sex, Pseudo-canonical narration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:30:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marwood, stoned, sees Danny from a new perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Haze

Not one in twenty million Londoners has to wake up to a sight as bad as Withnail drunk and practising audition pieces. It's only ever me who opens an unlockable bedroom door, still half-asleep at mid-afternoon, and sees him pacing the landing in nothing but trenchcoat and boxers, declaiming random bits of Shakespeare.

'Shut up, Withnail. Or pass me a drink, at least.'

He avoids my eyes, and hands over the bottle of gin with which he's been gesticulating, using it alternately as sword and telescope. It looks and feels suspiciously light.

'It's empty. Withnail, why's it empty?'

'I finished it off this morning. You'll have to go without.'

'You fucker. There's no more drink in the flat, is there?'

He shrugs, still averting his gaze from mine. 'You seem to enjoy going without. You and your martyr complex. I thought I'd be helping you out.'

'You _fucker_.' I step back behind the bedroom door and slam it shut, cross the room and pull back the curtains from the open window. Outside, the city's grey and monochrome, sullen under insistent drizzle and streaked by the sharp kind of breeze that blows all the litter of Camden from its rest on streetcorners and gutters, and sends it spiralling upwards through whatever openings it finds.

He opens the door again, script falling apart into its constituent pages under his arm, resolutely unapologetic. 'Oh by the way, Danny's here.'

'Danny?!'

'Yes, Danny,' he enunciates like the leader of a remedial drama class. 'It's cold and wet, why are you surprised that he's put in an appearance? Anyway, go and talk to him. I'm busy.'

He's not busy at all, the fucker, but he gives the appearance of it, all muttered lines under his breath as he makes his way back to his own room. I pull my shirt tight around me and step through to the front room, ignoring Danny, ignoring everything but the quickest path to the half-burnt-down spliff in the ashtray, and when it's safe between my lips I turn to look at him.

Danny looks like the devil, like he always does, perched on the arm of the sofa behind a cloud of smoke, legs crossed tight and hands busy constructing a joint as spare and wiry as himself. He looks unsettlingly loosened by the rain, the matte-black tips of his hair uncurling slightly with the pressure of rainwater, softly wet and dripping onto the grimy collar of his astrakhan, its fabric matted and mired like he's been rolling around in the gutters. I spark up a lighter, resurrect the remnants of my own joint and inhale.

He looks up, slightly startled. 'Ah - alright, man?'

I nod, and take the furthest seat from him that I can. 'Danny.'

He makes me nervous as fuck, and I smoke too quickly, trying to breathe out all my tension and anxiety and sense of potential disaster in the rushed relief of exhalation, trying to keep him at arms' length. I don't know what he wants. I never do. 

It's quiet enough between us to hear the drumming of the rain against the window, the glass rattling in the frame, and quiet enough to hear Withnail's muffled declarations of satanic intent from the next room.

' _Come thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell..._ '

Danny cocks his head and listens for a second, dragging contentedly then tipping his head back, a tongue of smoke exhaled towards the ceiling. 'That him, then?'

'That's him, yeah. Practising, you know.'

Danny nods, philosophically. 'Not an especially common occurrence, seeing one of you without the other.' 

'I – no.' 

'It's not the natural order of things, if I may say so, one of you without the other.' He's closer, imperceptibly but undeniably, enveloped in that customary musk of patchouli and dried-in dirty rainwater, edged with something chemical. 'You feeling neglected, man?'

His stare is way too intense. I've smoked too much too quickly. I get up, too fast, and stumble into the kitchen, rifle the cupboards for anything that borders on edible and come up with nothing better than a tin of soup, already opened and half-full. Or maybe half-empty. I tip the lumpy, processed contents of the tin into the cleanest-looking pan and start to laugh, my voice an abstract-sounding stutter. 

When I look up, inevitably, Danny's leaning against the doorframe, head on one side, smoking reflectively. 'What are you doing, man?'

'I'm making soup.' It needs to be coffee, but there isn't any. It'll do. Anything warm and liquid and undeniably present on the tongue. I need something to concentrate on. Something to take my mind off my mind.

'I don't know if you should be eating that, man,' says Danny, levering himself off the doorframe and taking far too keen an interest in the contents of the pan. 'Just saying this out of concern for your welfare, but, you do know what they put in the soup these days, don't you.'

I look up, the stove warming under my hands, at his utterly nonchalant expression, hands spread as though absolving himself of all responsibility for driving me to the edge of freaking out. I know how likely any request for elaboration is to take me over the edge, but I ask, as though reciting lines. 'What do they put in the soup, Danny?'

He takes a step back, inhales and exhales, his eyes never leaving mine. 'Well. When was the last time you saw a stray dog in Camden, eh?'

I start to laugh again, but it's edgy and forced. 'Don't be fucking stupid.'

'You may call it fucking stupid, man. I'm in no doubt that that's what they'd want you to do.' He darts his gaze conspiratorially to one side then the other. 'But the fact remains that you don't see many stray dogs round Camden, do you? Far be it from me to speculate, but cause and effect, man, that's all I'm saying. Cause and effect.'

'For fuck's sake, Danny, please. There's no dog in the soup.'

'What d'you reckon's in there, then?' says Danny, stepping closer again and exhaling over my shoulder. 'Cause I have to say, in my admittedly limited experience that don't look like any –' he reaches around me, uncomfortably close, picks up the tin and eyes it with deep distrust '- any _Boiled Beef and Selected Vegetables_ I've ever seen.' 

Even as I shake my head, I can feel the desperation driving the action and the already less than appetising soup has taken on a more suspicious aspect – overly glutinous and thick with unknown additives, sinisterly opaque. I don't want it anywhere near me. I want to let it boil dry in the pan and evaporate. My knees are weak. I think I'm getting the fear.

In situations like this, I've learnt, all that's left to do is cling on tightly to the things one wants to believe are certain, repeat them like a prayer, like a nursery rhyme, until they shine with the polished ring of truth. 

'There's no dog in the soup, Danny.' 

He's silent, and it's a wrench for me to tear my horrified gaze away from the contents of the pan and look up at him. When I do, it's even more of a shock because he's broken out into a dazzling grin, teeth white in the display-case dark of his mouth, barely-perceptible laughter like the creak of a coffin-lid. It's one of the most frightening expressions I've ever seen up close.

'Course there's no dog in the soup, man. Should know better than to take me seriously -'

'Right.' I exhale, with nothing in my mouth but relief, and then I take the joint he hands me and drag hard. 

'- you had any kebabs, though, lately?'

'Fuck's sake, Danny, stop talking.' The fear's darkening the edges of my vision, throbbing hard behind the eyes. I need to sit down. So I do, hard on my knees, let the joint slip down between my fingers and burn a hole in the grimy linoleum. Somewhere above me, Danny's still talking, the fucker.

'Now, despite being a great believer in each to their own, I have to say, man, that you're not usually this much of a lightweight. You been unwell, or anything, since I saw you last? Anyway: be seated, it will pass.'

'I am fucking seated.'

'I know you are, man. In quite the aesthetically pleasing position, some might say.'

'I – what?!'

Ohh, headrush. I press the heels of my hands against screwed-shut eyes, watch the myriad of tiny fireworks burst across the dark of my eyelids. I know what he means, of course, but I can't process it - the limits of my vision and imagination are what I can see when I open my eyes: Danny's Cuban heels, incongruously polished under the shadow of grimy denim and the matted fur of his coat that bulks out a frame like a pipecleaner. 

I'm seeing him from a new perspective, I realise vaguely, raising my head. It's interesting to note his unexpected strength and warmth and physicality. He's like one of his spliffs, I decide, in wonder: potency tightly-packed inside cloth as thin as a Rizla. I get the sudden and, it seems to me, perfectly understandable urge to wet my fingertip and run it along the seams of his jeans like a roll-up, then press to seal them closed. 

'What are you doing, man?'

'Fuck's sake, Danny, shush, I'm concentrating,' I hear myself say, intent on the sensation of my skin and nails against the grain of denim. 

How much grass has Danny ingested over the years, I wonder, and how many pills and how much powder? He must be bursting at the seams with narcotics and stimulants, it must run pure in his veins. He must _taste_ of it, the way the scent of it clings to him. I wonder if his skin, underneath his clothes, bears any visible traces of sustained chemical debauchery, and it occurs to me to find out by dragging down the nearest zip to hand, clearing away the litter of buttons, belt and boxers until my hand is clenched around Danny’s cock, bare unobstructed skin, which at first glance appears to be nothing out of the ordinary. I lean in, up on my knees and a bit short of breath, and examine it more closely.

'Er, while I've no desire to spoil whatever moment you're having here, I trust you are aware –'

'Danny, shush, I just want to see if you taste like a joint...' the voice doesn't sound like my own, muffled against rough black curls and bunched-up boxers, and it's not really much of an experiment given that the first couple of licks provide fairly conclusive evidence that Danny doesn't taste of anything out of the ordinary, really, just that customary musk of sweat and smoke. It's a minor disappointment that I think might be rectified by licking differently, a certain way, a certain pressure or pattern. His hand's sudden clench in my hair seems to prove this either right or wrong, I'm not sure which, and I look up to see him with open red lips and his other hand braced on the stove.

'I – I'd appreciate it if you didn't stop just there, man –'

His voice is subtly altered, too. I look up at him, then down, and then up again and I can't quite recall what exactly I'd been doing before I stopped it. I should probably ask Danny. Or Withnail, yes, he'd know. Where is Withnail, anyway?

'Danny, where's Withnail?'

He stares. 'I've no fucking idea, man, but look, I'm really not into the free-est of free love, you know? I mean, if you want –'

I clear my throat. A shout of 'Withnail, where the fuck are you?' is usually all it takes to summon him up, like a pantomime demon through a trapdoor, and sure enough, he appears, still clutching the tattered script in one hand, gaze sweeping the room, in mid-declamation:

' _...thru' the blanket of the dark, to cry Hold! -_ What the _fuck's_ happening here?'

Danny's doing up his belt, pulling his coat closed, and taking sidling steps towards the door, and there's a twinge of disappointment although I can't remember why. 'I've no idea what's happening here,' says Danny, indicating me with a nod. 'You're best off asking him.'

Withnail stalks forward, mouth tense in no worse emotion than utter confusion. 'What the _fuck_?'

'Also – you might want to put something on under that coat, man,' says Danny. 'You do happen to be entertaining company, you know. Although not quite as entertaining as your mate here.' He looks down at me. 'What's your name again?'

'Danny, get out, and never come back here or ever speak to me again,' says Withnail, with casual venom, throwing the script into the corner. 'Why the fuck –' he stops dead, gaze fixed above my head, and changes tack. 'Did you finish all the soup, you fucker?'

I look up and shrug, and words trip out on a sudden tide of laughter. 'You don't want any of that, mate. You know what they put in the soup these days, don't you?'

He stares. 'What do they put in the soup?'

I turn my head as the door bangs. There's empty space and that vague scent of patchouli that should really be sulphur, given that it's Danny. I get to my feet, not without a process of trial and error, shrug again and relight the spliff, holding it out to Withnail like a pipe of peace. 

'Let's go and sit down. I'll tell you all about it.'


End file.
